


New Soil

by Mary_the_gardener



Category: The Fountain (2006)
Genre: Gen, The Tree Of Life, prehistory
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-23
Updated: 2020-07-23
Packaged: 2021-03-05 03:14:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 702
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25463791
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mary_the_gardener/pseuds/Mary_the_gardener
Summary: Is death a disease? Is there a tree that holds a cure? How many have wished for it, looked for it? Did anyone find it?What does it mean to be cured?
Comments: 2
Kudos: 2
Collections: Juletide 2020





	New Soil

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Gammarad](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gammarad/gifts).



> It seems that lately I like writing in second person PoV, but please, don't see it as a situation in which the reader is protagonist and is supposed to read imagining to be in the fic themselves, because that's not what I have in mind when I use this PoV.

**~300,000 B.P. Gauteng, Southern Africa**

Highveld is unkind. It's green and florid, but the river attracts lots of big _things_ , with scary teeth and rumbling roars, and, more than anything, incredibly fast legs. Running is unkind. There are _Others_ , you see them, who have it easier, they're different from your kin, they get away more easily from the flesh-tearing-toothed-things; they stand tall in the plains. You like trees better, you feel safer up high, you prefer moving along their branches to walking down in the plain.

But trees grow even far from the river. So you go.

The bottom of her face looks different on one side.

There are still a lot of trees around you, and less things that want to eat you, and holes in the earth, where you can be safe, but you still like it better up among the branches. They are your shelter, your safeguard.

There's a big bump down on the side of her head. She doesn't want to eat, can't. You climb up to the highest branches of the highest tree to offer her the riper fruits. Then rip your nails off your fingers digging in the ground to get her the most tender roots.

Her eyes are big and round on her lanky body, the corner of her lips curved up.

**~50.000 B.P. Nawakhin, Middle East**

Your folk likes the excitement of group hunting, the collective shouting, the sense of power when you win over a competitive predator. All your life you've had to push them to the tedious task of collecting, you've guided them to each field to be harvested across the seasons, you've healed them when they broke a bone in the run after a big hairy creature. You protect within yourself the knowledge of all the plants that have saved their lives. And how many of them you have saved in your many moons.

But now you know this is the last time you'll see the pale lady of the night go through its cycle. You feel it in your bones. And you have tried to find someone: you have brought a bunch of boys with you in your expeditions to collect precious herbs, you've kept them around when you prepare your concoctions. You're not sure it worked. There's no hope. There's no hope. If only you didn't have to leave them.

Then, suddenly, there's hope. It's a daraban, different from all the other darabans you have seen in your long life. And darabans have saved many of your kin, that is true, but they could never save you, you just know it. But this one, this one is different, you can see it from its branches covered in flowers not quite like any of its siblings. You make a house of the hollow in between its big old roots.

You were right, all they learned was to bury you together with your herbs.

**~500 B.P. Central America**

The waters of the big triangle have been turning still. The cascade is but a thin beam along its side. And your community suffers. The people lament, the birds in the sky wail, the leaves all around you hang gloomily, with nothing to weep.

You have heard tales, coming from outside the forest; tales of wan people, emerging from the salty vastness, bringing mayhem with their touch.

And you had heard other tales, from the ones before you, when you were still the apprentice and not the ahau can mai; prophecies of how _the source_ will need nourishment.

You look at the k'in and nakom performing their daily duties and instead all you do is walk up the big steps. It's not your time now, and it's not you that it needs. They told you obscure stories about new soil and atavic sap. All your books can't tell you what to do.

You understand when you're in the dark passage that leads to _the waters_ , when you've seen those tales become real with your own eyes and are fighting with your last resort to protect _the source_. You see the new in front of you, and the old inside of you. And now you know what to do.

**Author's Note:**

> Now, a little data to understand where this mess comes from:
> 
> -The first scene refers to Homo Naledi, whose remains have been found in a cave in the northern area of The Cradle of Humankind. The shape of some bones (fingers in particular) indicates that this species still spent significant amount of time on trees. There are signs of a tumor in a jaw bone. There's been theories (confuted) about the cave being a burial site. 
> 
> \- The second scene refers to a skeleton of Neanderthal found in the Shanidar Cave (Iraq), traces of a big variety of pollens have been found around it, suggesting that the body was purposefully buried with flowers, which would mean the burial also had a symbolic significance (these theories too have been confuted). Daraban is the kurdish name of Pistacia Atlantica, a variety of pistachio tree with various medical properties, of which some remains have been found in the Kabara Cave, a cave in Israel with remains of Neanderthal.
> 
> \- ahau can mai, ah k'in and ah nakom are terms related to the priestly hierarchy.


End file.
